Sunday, January 11, 2015

TRIGGER WARNING: DISCUSSION OF SELF-HARM, SUICIDE ATTEMPTS, INSTITUTIONALIZATION, SELF-ABUSE, AND PEER ABUSE. PLEASE VIEW AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION, AND CONTACT ME IMMEDIATELY (EITHER ON FACEBOOK OR ON HERE) IF YOU NOTICE A TRIGGER THAT WAS NOT MENTIONED HERE.

Well guys, it's been a while since I've posted, so for your viewing pleasure/entertainment, we have me in video form talking about my experiences with self-harm, suicide, the mental health system, and how I've been sober from self-harm and suicide for 5 YEARS this month!

Friday, May 23, 2014

Autism is a genetically inherited
disability. It is extremely common for Autistic parents to have Autistic children.
It is, in fact, more common for Autistics to give birth to Autistics than their
non-Autistic counterparts—although admittedly it is not impossible for non-Autistics
to have Autistic children. I am not a genetic scientist, admittedly, but I can
tell you that as the Autistic daughter of an undiagnosed Autistic man (I know
he’s Autistic because he is socially awkward, extremely obsessive and
perfectionistic, struggles with time management, relies heavily on calendars
and alarms in spite of being unemployed, struggles to not come across as angry
when he isn’t, is extremely book smart yet forgets to eat or take his medicine,
etc.) whose father is ALSO an undiagnosed Autistic (I know that he is Autistic because he’s a diehard atheist, has
published a couple of lengthy books, has a PhD in marine biology, taught as a professor
for years, can talk for hours on end about things that interest him… and he has
some of the worst social skills I have ever seen. Ask my Dad why he will never
eat pickled beets again. Or, just go to Molotov Med Cocktail’s Facebook page,
and PM me asking about the story. I’ll be happy to tell you if you think you
can stomach a gross story), I can say for certain that Autism runs in families.

So, with that said, why are some
Autistics suddenly pretending that Autism isn’t something you can inherit from
your parents? Or better yet, why is it that when some “Autism” parents find out
they are actually Autistic parents,
other Autistic activists are quick to say “You are not Autistic.” There’s a
saying in certain parts of the Autism community—“We are like your child.” And
on some broader level, they are right. Both they and the children in question are Autistic. There is no denying that
the Autistic activists in question share similar sensory sensitivities, social
challenges, and accommodations required to get by in the world. But maybe we’re
forgetting another solid piece of advice in the midst of all this—a saying just
as true, which really applies to any
disability—“If you’ve seen/met/heard of one person with Autism, you’ve seen/met/heard
of one person with Autism.”

One Autistic’s experiences will vary
from another’s. A lot. And about the
closest people we can get to being like them, are usually their parents, who might
in fact be Autistic. But when certain Autistic activists start to argue
with parents of Autistic kids (whether those parents are Autistic or not), words
like “murder-apologist” and “ableists” get thrown at them. When those parents
disclose their Autism, they are met with a mob of angry Autistics calling them
liars.

And let me be perfectly clear about
this—that
is fuckingtriggering for me.

When my Tourette’s symptoms started
at the ripe old age of 13, people asked me if I was “doing it for attention.”
People talked about me behind my back, saying I was only pretending to have
Tourette’s, or making my symptoms seem worse than they were. Not
long after that started, I attempted suicide and began self-harming. Several
times—with what I hope is my last
attempt and act of self-harm ever at the age of 18. In other words, I don’t take it
lightly when mobs of people tell people who just figured out they are Autistic
that they aren’t Autistic. That, in itself, is ableism, and it’s the kind that
nearly pushed me over the edge.

The icing on the cake, however, is why I think these Autistics are telling
these parents they are murder-apologists/murders-in-the-making/not Autistics. I
think it’s because the parents are making some really, really good points, that
goes against all of their black and white thinking. They don’t want to be
wrong. They don’t want to admit that a certain Autistic-run organization is
just as guilty as Autism Speaks of focusing their funds on all of the wrong
efforts. I don’t want to “fight Autism.” I also don’t want to fight Autism
Speaks. That is just as useless to me and other Autistics as trying to cure us.

What is useful is providing Autistic adults the funds to live on their
own. What is useful is providing
coping mechanisms for Autistics—and no, I do not mean any of that bullshit like
forcing eye contact or sensory discomfort in the name of therapy—I mean stuff
like “How do I manage to find the spoons to make food, clean my house, go to
work, go to school, and every other survival skill I need to get by?” It’s
helping Autistics start businesses if they want to. It’s not spending all of the donations you receive on tearing down
another organization that you fundamentally disagree with.

Please understand I don’t think all,
or even most Autistic activists are doing this. It’s just that the ones who are
doing it are the loudest. And that’s giving Autism a bad name. I don’t want
Autism to be known as “that disease that makes you a complete asshole to people
who are on your side.” I mean, of course, it shouldn’t be known as a disease at
all, but that’s the kind of ignorance we have to look forward to if we don’t
start trying to have rational conversations that aren’t just a name-calling
shouting match.

So if I haven’t
alienated you, and assuming you have spoons, I hope you’ll be willing to try to
carry on in the community as peacefully as you can. I hope you will disagree
with others as respectfully as possible. I hope we can mend things between us.
Because if not, we’re kinda fucked as Autistics, aren’t we?

Thursday, February 27, 2014

People often talk
about their own Autistic children, and how one of the key indicators of their
Autism was an onset of regression around the age of two. That never happened
for me in the classic sense—I learned to talk while I was young, and I kept my
language abilities all throughout my years. There were meltdowns and shutdowns that
have left me unable to find energy even for my own thoughts, let alone words,
but I consider this different than being nonverbal. We hear all
about Autistic toddlers who regress—but what we don’t hear about as often is
the adults who do. That’s me right now. My life is a wreck.

Let’s start with the basics. My hygiene
is a major concern. I often don’t bath, and even less often do I brush my teeth.
I know I need to do those things. I know that my health will deteriorate if I
don’t. But I also know, as far as the tooth brushing thing goes, that my gag
reflex gets triggered, and it causes me to have to stop brushing whenever I do.
It’s painful. It’s tedious. And it raises my anxiety just to think about brushing
them, even though I know my teeth need the extra care an attention. If I’m
being honest, the bathing thing has more to do with forgetfulness. I forget how
many days it’s been since I last did it. And the sad thing is, I actually enjoy
baths. But it doesn't show in how I deal with them.

Now, let’s get to the worst part… my
apartment. The apartment I share with my husband. It’s a borderline hoarding
situation—and while I have no sentimental attachments to most of the stuff in
our apartment, that doesn't change the fact that a big part of this mess is
mine. Dirty dishes left uncleaned, garbage thrown on the floor, dirty clothes covering
the floor so that you can barely see it. There’s stuff that has needed sorting
through since we moved in here back in July, things that need donating,
selling, throwing away… but we have such a backlog of household chores that we have
to get through in order to even begin getting this place to look like a home.
Our apartment is tiny—we don’t really have room to live like this. But we do.

It all comes down to anxiety, and spoons. My anxiety is crippling. I can’t even
begin to think about cleaning this place up without having a moment of panic. I
can’t think about cleaning ME up without panicking. It’s that bad. I don’t know
what to do, other than just do it—but doing it is the hardest part.

Thanks for reading. To end on a positive note—even in this period of regression,
there has, and will, be growth for me. I will come out the other side of this a
braver, stronger, more independent woman than I ever was before. I will
overcome, and when I do, the world will be better for it. I have to remember
that my worth isn't in my failures—it’s in my successes, however small and trivial
they may seem to others.

Thursday, January 2, 2014

It’s January of 2014, and that technically means it isn’t
Suicide Prevention Month. That’s in September, which also happens to be the
month of my birthday and my anniversary. Truthfully, I’d usually much rather
spend September celebrating my birth and the life I enjoy with my husband, than
touch on that monster known as my past. However, January is much more
appropriate for me. January doesn’t just mark a new year for me. It marks
something so, so much more.

January 10th, 2010. I was
stressed beyond my ability to cope. I was about to start my first semester of
college in a week, and all I could think was how I wasn’t in the least bit
prepared to handle it. It had been almost 2 years since my last suicide attempt.
I didn’t care. I felt I was at the end of my rope. I felt I wouldn’t live up to
everyone’s expectations. I felt like everything about me screamed failure. I felt
like I didn’t deserve my boyfriend. I felt like I didn’t deserve anything—yes, even
my right to live. I had given a speech years before, where I spoke about yet
another one of my suicide attempts, (there were 4, total), and how I had so
much to live for. In this dark moment, 4 years later, that didn’t even matter.
What I heard coming out of my 14-year-old mouth was lip service, just words
that sounded really deep coming from some kid with a history of self-harm. Words
that said, “Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine” and hid the message underneath
of “I don’t know if I’m going to want to live to see my 21st birthday.”

I didn’t want to live to find out what would happen when I finally let everyone
down. I talked it over in my head a few more times, and finally made my choice.
I walked back to my parents’ bathroom, grabbed a box of Benedryl, filled up a
glass of water, and consumed the entire thing. I locked the door to my bedroom,
and sent my boyfriend a text goodbye. I felt this was the best way to leave a
suicide note, without anyone being able to stop me in time.

I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

You know, the mind has a way of forgetting extremely important details in
moments of crisis. In this case, my forgetfulness saved my life. My boyfriend
had my mom’s number. He was panicked. He did what any rational person in his
shoes would have done, and called my mom. She wasn’t home, but answered the
phone when she saw who was calling. He told her everything I had told him—that
I had just consumed an entire box of Benedryl in a suicide attempt. My mom
called my Dad, who was home with me, and as soon as he heard the news, he came
banging on my door, and the gig was up. I was caught.

I was taken to the ER, and kept over night. I spent the entire evening
explaining my very, very personal fuck up to complete and total strangers. I
was stuck there, being forced to pretend that these people were asking these
nosy questions out of any reason other than having it on file, to never be
looked at, or seen by another person. They didn’t genuinely care about what
happened. They were just doing their paid jobs as doctors, nurses, and
technicians, which was to keep me from being dead.

I’m sure people would love to hear some touchy-feely story about how I did all
of this, but came out the other side of this life event saying, “You know what?
Life IS worth living.” No. You don’t get to tell my story. My story is way more
complicated than some simple shift in paradigm. You want to know why I’ve been
clean from self-harm for 4 years, come January 10th? It wasn’t out
of hope of a better life. It was out of realizing I was fucked. I was stuck
here. I was somehow invincible to dying, and every time I tried to die, there
was always someone there to stop me. Pretty depressing, right? Well, not
entirely. I actually like being alive now more than I have in a long, long
time. But please, don’t piss on my foot and tell me it’s raining. Sobriety for
me doesn’t mean I’ve stopped thinking about hurting myself. It means that when
I do, I ask myself a non-accusational, “why?” It means that I have those thoughts,
and realize that I have 4 years under my belt—which would be time wasted if I tried
my hand at self-harm again. It means knowing when I’ve reached my limit of what
I can handle, and putting on my brave face as I try to take on America’s
horrifically troubled mental health system from inside the walls of an
inpatient unit.

There is nothing easy about my sobriety. There is nothing I can do in my
darkest hours but volunteer to be a lab rat in the name of my own safety and
sanity. And being sober means accepting that, owning it, and choosing not to
die in spite of it.

If there is any one thing you should take away from this post, it’s this: if
you are struggling with suicidal ideation, self-harm, or thoughts of self-harm,
DO. NOT. DO IT. Not for the reasons your family and friends will give you—that they
love you, that they’d be devastated if you died, that you just gotta try a
little harder to be happy—all of that is just cliché, and probably not the
words of wisdom you need in your moments of crisis. Here’s what I needed to
hear: your suicide attempt may sound like a great idea to you right now. Your
suicide attempt, should you go through with it, might even be successful.

Don’t assume it will be. Assume the worst. Assume you will
wake up in a hospital bed, with a vague memory of the night before, and be
surrounded by angry loved ones who want to know why you would do this to THEM.
Yes. That’s how they see this. Not as your tragedy, but theirs. There is no
shame like the shame you feel when people ask you why you tried to kill
yourself. In their eyes, you just tried to kill someone they really care about.
So expect anger. Expect rejection. Expect that you will have to spend at least
2 years trying to get people to trust you enough again to be alone with things
that you could use to kill yourself with for 5 minutes, because every time I
crossed the line into acting on those thoughts, that’s what fucking happened,
one way or another.

Know that you aren’t alone. Know that you’re not wrong for being reluctant to
seek intensive inpatient treatment for your problems, when your mental health
system provides cookie cutter care for people of highly diverse backgrounds in
crisis situations. Know that it’s an evil necessity sometimes to go to those
places. Just make sure that when you do go, it’s on your terms. It’s better to
be there voluntarily, allowing you to leave whenever you’re fed up with the BS/are
properly medicated/no longer an immediate threat to yourself, than to be forced
to stay until they’re satisfied with your progress, or your insurance runs out—whichever
comes first.

Trust me. It’s worth it to hang in there just a while longer. You’re worth it,
even if you don’t realize it. When you finally manage to come out the other
side, you’ll be stronger and better than you could have ever imagined.

Friday, October 11, 2013

It’s October, meaning it’s time to
be aware of SO MANY THINGS. Breast cancer, domestic violence, pregnancy loss
and infant loss, LGBT history… and the list keeps going! But this month, there’s
one issue that affects me personally, and that’s bullying. Yes, you hear about
it all the time. Kids and adults alike can be victims, though kids are much
more prone to it. I pretty much had a target painted on me with a sign that
said, “This kid is vulnerable,” which left me somewhere at the bottom of the
food chain in my grade level. Most of what I experienced was verbal or emotional
bullying, but a few physical incidents do stand out in my mind.

I’m in a place, half a decade later,
where I want to say I’m over it. I want to say, “I’m done being angry, because
it uses up too many of my resources.” I want to stop obsessing needlessly over
how one of the kids who physically bullied me later went on to become salutatorian.
How she won several awards for her journalism. How she climbed to the top of
the social and academic ladder, and yet I was left with a crippling set of
disabilities that made me drop out of school. There are moments where I think I’m
already there. “I’m better than this,” I tell myself. But then my husband
catches me in mid-speech, getting more and more flustered and emotional as I
relive the story of my teen years. That happened yesterday, actually. I was
defensive. I told him I was over it, when my words, and my tone of voice,
clearly expressed that I was still just as much stuck in those events as I was
when it finally dawned on me that I was a human being with at least some level
of worth and dignity, and that I had been wronged.

My self-esteem was so low as a teen
that I felt I deserved every mean thing the kids did or said to me. It actually
took me a couple of years to get angry. But when I did, I suddenly couldn’t
talk about school without talking about all the anger it made me feel. My sense
of justice feels violated just by the virtue of those kids going on and living
fulfilling lives. I keep thinking to myself that the salutatorian of my class
instead should have been expelled from the school when she threw rocks at me
with a couple other kids (who also should have been expelled). That particular
point came up in my conversation with my husband yesterday. He doesn’t think
they should have been expelled. I got angry and defensive when he said that…
even though some part of me knows that their expulsion wouldn’t have made my
life any better, and it would have only made theirs worse. Though truthfully,
there’s still that voice in my head that says, “The whole point of expelling
them is to make their lives worse, just like they did to me!”

But would expelling them have made my life
better? I probably wouldn’t even notice the effect it would have on my life. If
the salutatorian had been expelled, then I wouldn’t really know that there was
some outcome where she could have been salutatorian. I probably would have
still left the school, considering how bad my Tourette’s, Bipolar, and anxiety
symptoms were. I’d still be as angry and unhappy with my school career as I am
today. I owe it to myself, not to my bullies, to move past my anger. Because I’m
fighting in this endless loop of frustration that starts with a discussion of
school, or bullying, or whatever, and suddenly works its way into me crying and
yelling at anyone who dares try to tell me that I might be a little too
entrenched in what happened. I’m tired of being the victim—the vengeful victim.
I’m tired of telling myself that my life would be better if I had ruined
theirs, because it wouldn’t. The damage would still be there, and so would the
guilt of ruining another person’s school career.

But that doesn’t
mean I shouldn’t have gotten angry in the first place. Because guess what—this
is what humans do when they grieve the loss of something they had, or perceived
they had. The 5 Stages of Grief—Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and
Acceptance—sometimes happen out of order, too. Sometimes you go through some of
the stages, and regress back to previous stages. But you need to go through all
the stages at least once, to get to the final stage. So don’t deny yourself the
opportunity to go through them, just out of fear of being the angry, vengeful
victim like me. No—you owe yourself those stages. You owe yourself your grief.
You owe it to yourself so you can eventually get past it, and be at peace with
your tragedy. Whatever your tragedy is—whether it’s bullying, chronic illness, losing
someone you love, or something else altogether—you can get through it. You can be
in denial. You can get angry. You can bargain. You can mourn. You can get
defensive. But try to ask what your particular stage of grief is accomplishing
for you. If you realize that you’re stuck in a stage of grief, ask yourself
what positive things you can do to make the world better for you, and hopefully
others. Maybe your experiences are just what another person needs to cope with
their own grief.

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Earlier this week, this happened. Yeah. I’ll give you a moment to let that sink in a bit more, in case
you haven’t already heard the story.

It’s terrible. Issy Stapleton is a 14-year-old Autistic girl, and her mother, Kelli
Stapleton, is facing charges for trying to kill both Issy and herself with
carbon-monoxide poisoning. I can’t say I knew Issy or her family personally,
but I have friends on Facebook who did. I can say this—Issy did not deserve what happened. Kelli Stapleton’s job as her
mother was at the very bare minimum to keep her daughter alive. Issy may have
been aggressive, she may have been having those difficult to bear teenaged
years, but there is never an excuse for murder, save in self-defense.

Now, have I made it clear that I deplore what Kelli Stapleton did? That I am
grieving on behalf of an Autistic girl who has been permanently brain-damaged
by an act of cruelty? Good. Because now I’m going to fuck with your
expectations. I sympathize with Kelli Stapleton.

“But Mrs. Molotov, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t feel bad for the
murderer while claming you’re mourning for the victimized 14-year-old.” I think
Kelli Stapleton deserves to be fully punished by the law for what she did—attempted
murder is attempted murder. There is no “unless you’re a(n)…” No. Sorry Kelli, you fucked up, you have to
live with what you did. I did too, once.

Here’s the
thing. I have tried to take my own life 4
times. Actually, that’s not true. Those were the attempts that required
hospitalization. And that won’t begin to cover the times I sat and thought
about hurting myself, sometimes even going so far as to have a plan. I never tried
to take anyone else down with me. But I can speak to that level of
hopelessness. I may not agree with Kelli that what she was feeling hopeless
about was worth feeling hopeless about at all, but that isn’t the point. The
point is, something made her feel that low. She was sweeping a giant, shameful emotion
under the rug, and didn’t feel she had anything that could make it go away.
Where I get fuzzy is how this ends up hurting Issy.

Maybe she thought Issy was the
problem. And she didn’t want to live with the shame of people knowing that. And
I can’t agree with that mindset. But I can sympathize with a person’s pain
while simultaneously not excusing their actions. That’s exactly what people did
to me when I tried to kill myself. People wanted to help me. People were angry
that I could do something so foolish and selfish. But they still loved me. They
still reached out, and said, “I’m here for you,” without just saying, “Suicide
is TOTALLY okay!”

No one (I hope) should say that it’s okay to excuse Kelli’s actions. Kelli made
a giant-ass mistake, and you had better believe she’s going to be doing time
for it. It’s just, maybe instead of spending our time yelling at each other
over whether her actions were right, we should be focusing more on the mindset
that she had leading up to the murder-suicide. If we can learn to recognize the
signs in other families before they get to that point, maybe we can at the very
least reassure that person that their feelings are valid, but the actions they’re
considering are not.

Saturday, June 22, 2013

In this post, I will be courteous enough to avoid dropping
names. With that said, I am truly insulted by a thread I saw started in one of
the Autism blogging groups I’m in. A woman was asking people if it would be
considered “too vain and self-absorbed” if she wrote a post called “Thinner
Before Autism.” Well, she got a LOT of feedback, and 100% of it was mother
after mother chiming in to tell her that they knew EXACTLY what she meant.
Well, here are my thoughts for you ladies.

Did your child’s Autism make you order pizza? Did Autism hold a gun to your head
and say, “I will kill you if you don’t start eating pizza,” or did you decide
that you felt shitty and just wanted some comfort food to make you feel better?

Did your child’s Autism make you buy donuts? Or were you rushed that morning
(and every morning after) and decided, “Well, donuts taste good AND are a quick
way to get food into my belly”?

Did your child’s Autism make you go to the grocery store and buy chocolate and
Cheetos, to then go home and snack in private?

Did your child’s Autism make you order the large soda and fries, instead of
just water and the main course?

Did your child’s Autism make you need to take meds that make you gain weight?
Or did you have a condition that needed treatment, and there was a potential
side-effect from the meds you were prescribed of weight gain?

Guess what guys, I’m Autistic. I’m also fat. I know what caused my weight gain,
and what caused it was my own irresponsibility compiled with the meds I take.
My Autism didn’t make me fat. And I’m 99% certain your child’s Autism didn’t
make you fat. What I think is far more likely is you are making bad choices, or
taking medication that have side-effects of weight gain.

I am truly angered that you would put that blame on your child and their disability.
Would you like it if I said, “My neurotypical parents made me fat?” Wouldn’t
you be outraged if someone blamed YOU for making THEM fat? Because one day,
your child in all likelihood will grow up and discover the internet, and if I
were you, the last thing I would want your kid to find when they go hunting
around the web is you talking about how they made you fat, ugly, and miserable.
They didn’t make you those things. You did that, all by yourself, one cookie at
a time. But what they will come away thinking is that they are a burden to
society, and that all they are good at is making people miserable and fat.

So to the mom considering making the blog post titled, “Thinner Before Autism,”
try changing that title to “Thinner Before I Made Really Bad Decisions at
McDonalds,” or whatever it was you got fat eating or doing. Your child has nothing to do
with your waistline unless you are pregnant with them at this exact moment. Don't blame them for your mistakes.